I feel like Mesmer lacked in the last BWE

I posted this on the GW2 forums during the last beta weekend event...as well as discussing it during the final countdown to 12:04 AM in the mists lots of people agreed with me but I wanna share my opinions one more time on Guild Wars2 Guru just to see if I have even more public approvals.

So during the first BWE I thought Mesmers were right where they needed to be...summoning multiple illusions shattering them perfect. This last BWE I noticed how every Mesmer looked the same...most were carrying a greatsword and a sword and pistol, I thought that was weird so went into PVP.

To my discovery every mesmer was using a phantasm build maxing the damage for illunsionary duelist...this is all fine and good but it makes the class less versatile and more of a cookie cutter. I am not saying the phantasm build is OP or needs a Nerf or a Buff. I am saying GW2 needs to Buff the shatter skills.

Virtually F2 and F3 shatters are entirely useless unless you spec for them, and even then a confusion build is no where close to damage output as the phantasm build. Mind wrack is in need of a buff or more traits...don't agree with me on that? consider these traits and compare

These are the only 2 traits that effect mind wrack and other general traits for damage

mental torment (only 10% damage increase)

precise wrack (10% crit rate)

compounding power

empowered illusions

sharper images

These are the traits for phantasm and general traits (AKA illusionary duelist.)

And I am sure there is more combinations but ultimately you get the idea, a pahntasm build has more perks that give a higher percentage than mind wrack perks.

Personally I feel like the mesmer was not designed to just summon a transparent silhouette that unloads a barage of bullets doing 1000 (average) each bullet. I think a mesmer is supposed to hide in a group of multiple clones to keep players guessing and then burst with a shatter spell.

if they buff the shatter skills it will make scepter and staff more appealing choices (not just for chaos storm) but as of now I think Mesmer is just a cookie cutter and I feel disappointed considering GW2 promised they wouldn't make cookie cutter classes.

i think bw1 op, bw2 up, bw3 pretty close to right. some tweaking with the shatter mechanic and i think mesmers will be about right.

i also think they were far from cookie cutter in bw3. i see most people saying they used sword in the mh, but i was using sceptor, and i feel like i was having success. differnt playstyles will have different opinions though. i think that's where it might be hard for Anet to reach a balance, and not just with mesmer. They (anet) have to take into account more than one playstyle with each profession when they go about looking at traits and skills.

Damage-wise I felt we were a little on the losing side, especially compared to the other classes I tried last BWE. However, we offer some seriously annoying survivability, and I suppose that's their reason for our current damage numbers. Does make me kinda sad to see youtube clips of other classes running along using their "weaker" attacks to plonk off higher crits than we can burst at times but meh, if Anet feels the class is balanced then I have complete faith that they've set a target and are pretty close to where they want us. Tweaking/adjustment will continue to happen, but I suppose that overall you can't expect a huge damage increase at this point.

And as for the general usage of weapons among Mesmers, this will change as people become more familiar with the class. My guess atm is that people googled and searched youtube and copied in hopes of /win. Going for the bit more unorthodox speccs can be really rewarding though, as it will confuse your enemies quite a lot at times. Personally I tried out sword/sword and found I liked it quite a lot, though missing the stun from Pistol OH was a hit to take, but nothing you can't overcome if you slot the right utilities and have your specc in order.

Most interesting of all was the condition/confusion build imo, though it is less forgiving than GS & Sword/Pistol at times.

Just have to wait and see what they have come up with at launch, I have a feeling they have some nifty surprises in store for us. They already stated that they are looking at the scepter and improving shatters, and there are rumours going around that they have surprises for everyone at launch.

(As long as that surprise isn't that Blurred Frenzy now does the same damage as Hundred Blades, I think they will be quite awesome )

i think bw1 op, bw2 up, bw3 pretty close to right. some tweaking with the shatter mechanic and i think mesmers will be about right.

i also think they were far from cookie cutter in bw3. i see most people saying they used sword in the mh, but i was using sceptor, and i feel like i was having success. differnt playstyles will have different opinions though. i think that's where it might be hard for Anet to reach a balance, and not just with mesmer. They (anet) have to take into account more than one playstyle with each profession when they go about looking at traits and skills.

I do agree though that bw1 was OP XD

but I do not feel the mesmer is quite where it needs to be, currently now from last bw, Mesmer is squishy and has the duelist that unloads every (I believe 10 seconds?) its good burst but enemy players in pvp know that the duelist is not you. So you get easily sighted out and the squishyness of the mesmer you are down in a matter of seconds. The scepter makes you more deceptive but useless clones and you could also overwrite your duelist.

talking about it more out loud it is very difficult, I think Anet will have difficulty balancing. Even to compare my play style I am hiding in the clones my illusions do nothing and mind wrack does a low amount of damage (nothing like BW1 XD) where as more players this last bw were using the pistol sword combo, they were squishy and were left very vulnerable but had more damage.

I am not sure what needs to be buffed the base damage of mesmer or the sustainability

I also tried a mantra build and yeah that is just *facepalm* All of it is still subject to change of course but after this last bw I am uneasy on the PvP mesmer (PVE Mesmer is still great mobs have no clue which illusion is you XD)

The reason why you saw alot of people running around with sword/pistol or longsword is because those were the most balanced weapons in terms of damage and utility. The greatsword has some nice cc from aoe cripple and knockback while the sword has some nice burst damage for any foes who venture too close. The pistol is a nice compliment to the sword for it's burst damage. That is also why you probably saw alot of phantasm based builds. The scepter is currently pretty broken/useless and the staff isn't that impressive is PvP compaired to other professions like necros who could reach targets on the ground from walls or vice versa in WvW. As for the other offhands the focus is meh and the torch is ok. So you can see the limitations that the people had.
The reason you feel that the mesmer was better in the first beta was because the mesmer was introduced last hence they had very little time to test it properly. So because of that we got to see balancing being done in a very short amount of time. But if you compare to to another profession like the necro that has been around for a long time and look at their journey you can see they have undergone the same thing (e.g their deathshroud used to automatically trigger when their health was low). All I can say is a-net has 1 month to make alot of decisions in regards to the mesmer. I doubt the mesmer would be perfect at release but in time, they'll get it right.

BWE1 I felt ridiculously strong as long as I didn't use a scepter. Illusions were great, Shatters were powerful if you did them correctly, Traits way too messy with too many useless or ridiculously situational ones (I still feel this way about Traits on most classes).

BWE2 I laughed at how terrible the ENTIRE game felt, and actually got actively disappointed that I'd wasted my time/money on GW2 entirely.

BWE3 I tore people apart with Sword/Pistol, but nothing else seemed to work. I ran Sword/Pistol and Sword/Focus just for Temporal Curtain in between fights. I did enough damage on my own where I mostly used Distortion as my primary shatter to keep auto-attack pressure alive. It was a different playstyle. All other weapons felt really bad, though.

but I do not feel the mesmer is quite where it needs to be, currently now from last bw, Mesmer is squishy and has the duelist that unloads every (I believe 10 seconds?) its good burst but enemy players in pvp know that the duelist is not you. So you get easily sighted out and the squishyness of the mesmer you are down in a matter of seconds. The scepter makes you more deceptive but useless clones and you could also overwrite your duelist.

talking about it more out loud it is very difficult, I think Anet will have difficulty balancing. Even to compare my play style I am hiding in the clones my illusions do nothing and mind wrack does a low amount of damage (nothing like BW1 XD) where as more players this last bw were using the pistol sword combo, they were squishy and were left very vulnerable but had more damage.

I am not sure what needs to be buffed the base damage of mesmer or the sustainability

I also tried a mantra build and yeah that is just *facepalm* All of it is still subject to change of course but after this last bw I am uneasy on the PvP mesmer (PVE Mesmer is still great mobs have no clue which illusion is you XD)

i almost exclusivley pve'd in bw3. when i did sPvP i was running with 30 in chaos and 20 in inspiration. and i found survivability really good. i think base damage needs a buff over survival. but i only pvp'd for maybe 2 hours. so i can't really comment.

I agree that the power/crit builds felt a bit UP, but the condition/confusion builds were incredible. If played right, you could just watch players nuke themselves to death. I'd have to say it's rather close to being where it ought to be. AI still needs improvement a lot of help though.